Local Star by Aimee Ogden (ebook reader online free txt) 📕

lying to her and didn’t have the stomach to figure it out now, to hold up the pieces side by side, and see where they matched up. Someone wanted Casne’s career ended, someone close to her who had the opportunity, motive, Fleet access . . .

She couldn’t make the shapes fit the Kalo she’d known, so she didn’t try and keyed in a query to the family quadhome instead. The call rang and rang and rang unanswered, so she tried another query. This time, she put in a request to an unmanned wallport terminal upstairs in the Arcade. “What are you doing?” Kalo asked. She ignored him, and he let his head fall back against the wall behind him.

Mercifully, this time it pinged a response, and she keyed in her passcode for access. When she needed to do her weekly shopping, she’d always liked to use an open Arcade port to make sure the crowds weren’t packed around the fungus vendors and the nutrient tankers. Maybe she could use the same method now to get a glimpse of the situation upstairs. Better yet, someone might notice the in-use port and actually tell her what in all the worlds was going on in the Hab. And whether whatever was going on uphab might be going on in Justice too. If Kalo couldn’t handle it, maybe she could fly the Scooper herself? How hard could an old ore hauler be to fly?

She grasped at the tenuous fragments of that fantasy as the screen flickered, then resolved. Or almost resolved; Triz squinted and tried to make sense of what she saw.

After a moment, the image came together in her brain as well as on the screen. It was the Arcade she knew, but scribbled over in lines of gnarled green-brown. White lines flashed back and forth and left lingering visions on the port screen. Triz asked for volume and received it. The shrill hum of the white lines sliced through her. After a moment, a pair of lancet guns barked in answer.

Kalo’s chin lifted off his chest. “What was that?”

She gestured to the screen, wordless.

He whistled low. “Tunnelguns.”

That word Triz recognized. Tunnelguns were Ceebee stuff, the technology still beyond what the Fleet’s exotics-wranglers had been able to come up with. And probably more unpredictable than what the Admiralty would have tolerated in service anyway. “That green shit must be one of their bioweapons,” Triz murmured. The Hab’s immunodefenses should have stopped any kind of bioweapon, Triz wanted to say, but should haves didn’t patch the plastiglass.

Kalo was already on his feet. “Rocan,” he said, and cursed. “Rocan has to be behind this. Someone helped him escape Justice.” He looked around wildly. “I need a fighter. Get me in the most spaceworthy one you’ve got.”

“What?” That tore her attention from the wallport. “To stop him or to save him?”

He rounded on her, his bad hand held close to his chest, bent at an unnatural angle that indicated it was missing some significant metal-based infrastructure. “Shitting stars, Triz! You want to have, what, an ethical debate on biomods right this second?”

Arguments died in her throat. This was Kalo she was talking about. What an awful thing, to accuse someone she’d . . . cared about of being a Ceebee. “I’m sorry,” she said, trying to mean it. His shoulders pulled taut. “I don’t—I don’t understand, and I can work on that later, but what I want right this second is to make sure Casne’s safe.”

His stiff posture slackened a little and the hard tendon in his jaw softened. “Getting me in a light attack Swarmer right now gets you a step closer to that.”

“There’s two whaleships at anchor outside! Let their swarms handle it.”

He gestured violently to the port. “They don’t know he’s on the loose with a Ceebee rendezvous on the way, but we do.”

“I think you’re overlooking one shitting detail. What are you going to fly with? Your feet?”

“I’ll figure something out.” He was already stomping toward the row of moribund Skimmers and Arcwings, stepping over the coils of loose tubing and ducking under the tangles of wires that dragged out of open panels. “This one doesn’t look half bad.” He pointed, hand flapping.

Triz threw her arms in the air. “It looks fine because we pulled the entire arc array out of it for refitting. We were stomping all over its guts in Metal Reclamation ten minutes ago. Leave it be.”

A flicker of activity tugged Triz’s eyes back to the wallport. Two figures cut their way across the Arcade, in her view. The one taking cover behind must be Rocan. The Ceebee commander’s eyes weren’t mere holes anymore: even at the distance afforded by the wallport, Triz saw the faint gleam of some kind of misbegotten tech. The translucent outline of exotic-based body armor draped the shoulders of both men like a cloak, only flaring into full light when a lancet burst came close.

The second man . . . looked like Lanniq?

That didn’t make any sense.

Triz frowned at the strange sight and tried to remember what she’d been saying. “The only thing close to ready is the Scooper I told you about. Kalo, I think Rocan is on the move. And . . .” Confusion bit off her words. She’d already seen the damage done by a misplaced accusation. Shitting stars, she’d done a little damage herself just now. But this time, she didn’t think her eyes had lied to her. “And I think he’s got Lanniq with him running cover.”

“Lanniq?” Kalo spun on one heel and almost tripped over a vacuum casing. “No. He hates the Ceebees. His nephew joined them, and Lanniq never heard from him again.”

“See for yourself.” Triz gestured at the port screen so violently she almost missed the flash of movement. Not a barrage of lancet fire. Just one body in Fleet gray that dropped onto Lanniq from the Arcade level above. Triz’s heart beat a ragged double-time.

Casne. Casne, why?

Casne’s legs scissored between Lanniq’s and sent him sprawling.